A moment in time

With the oversized air conditioner blasting its icy dry air towards my recliner (chair), S brought a blanket to me and dropped it on my lap. I knew what it was for so I wordlessly opened it up to cover me and flipped an edge open for her to climb in. She dropped her pink terrycloth house robe to the floor and climbed under the blanket to recline with me and watch an old TBS movie. She shivered but a moment as my ice cold skin began sharing her body heat. Her cotton nightshirt felt soft and warm perhaps a bit too hot for me as she squirmed her way to a comfortable nook in my arm and side. Within minutes, our skin temperatures matched, and, with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes closed for the night, S settled onto her nightly hammock: me.

The touch of her hair, the smell of her recent bath permeating each strand, the flashes of light accents cast on lazy curls all combined to paint a memory that nowhere will ever be found again. To say angelic would be trite in addition to failing in insufficiency of context. Yet I am wont to share with you.

Her breathing slowed to a barely perceptible rise and fall, her small form was perfectly ensconced by my cradle, and her absolute trust lulled me to ignore the television; these I captured in my lifes recordings of memories. I had tried to move to relieve an arm suffering loss of circulation but a small hand stayed my effort. I surrendered to the sleepy directive and suffered the pins and needles as a father must do in these circumstances. And I kissed her. A kiss that echoes through the years in my most treasured vault of memories. A touch of lips to a sleeping little girls forehead surely could not be just cause for any society to declare it a violent criminal abuse.